Information:Chitose Sakurako is a fujoshi who first meets Himenogi Rin and Yamada Moe at an event for her favorite series, Prince Salaryman. Afterwards, she lands a job at their office, but when a manager named Hayami Yorimichi manipulates Sakurako into having sex with him and then posts the pictures on the internet, the three of them hatch a plan to get back at him.

Fujoshi Level:At the doujin event where Sakurako first met Rin, she got so into her cosplay as the Prince Salaryman character Red and her yaoi fantasies that she ended up french kissing Rin (also cosplaying the same character).

A couple of months back, Anime News Network announced that they were interviewing Kio Shimoku for the release of the new Genshiken Second Generation (aka Genshiken Second Season aka Genshiken Nidaime) bluray set. The interview is now up, which you can read here. Kio speaks about topics such as why he decided to introduce Hato to Nidaime, how he feels about otaku culture.

Kio actually answered my question, which I’m totally stoked about! I’ve reproduced it below, though I’m sure you could find it by just hitting “ctrl+f Ogiue.”

When it comes to Ogiue, one of the more notable visual changes is how her eyes are drawn. As this quality is unique to Ogiue in Genshiken, why did you decide to express her mental and emotional growth in this manner? Additionally, is it something you planned to do from the start, or was it something you developed as you worked on the manga?

It was accidental and naturally developed.

To put emphasis on her unfriendly look and distant nature, I designed her eyes without the highlight. After her mental transition, those characteristics changed and the initial design for her eyes simply didn’t work anymore.

It’s not surprising to me that the change in Ogiue’s would have come from a whim of sorts, as this is the case with a lot of creators and their characters. As much as I love the original Ogiue’s eyes, it also makes complete sense that they wouldn’t work nearly as well as she began to truly open up to Sasahara. It’s also quite noticeable how differently she looks and behaves compared to her former self (something I’ve tried to show off in my new banner).

The 0ther answer I find most interesting has to do with how Madarame’s “harem” has developed, because Kio states that it’s something of a natural progression. There were already characters interested in Madarame in some capacity, and when Saki finally rejected him, it opened up the playing field, so to speak. He wasn’t suddenly popular, they just began to be interested in him for just the way he is. If I were to interpret it further, it’s not like Madarame became the image of the attractive guy, but rather that he attracted exactly the type of people that would be into him.

As for the rest of the interview, it’s really worth a read and gives a lot to think about, especially when compared to his old interview with Publisher’s Weekly back in 2008. At the time, Kio expressed a lot of discomfort with the increasing attention otaku were getting in the media, and even in this ANN interview he talks about how he came from the generation where people were ashamed to be otaku. It’s really fascinating to see this mindset play out and evolve over time, as well as how the concept of “otaku” itself has become more nebulous. In fact, this sentiment has also been expressed by Tamagomago, who calls himself an old-type otaku standing in the face of these changes. In a way, it makes me wonder if Genshiken Nidaime is an attempt to navigate this newer environment in a way that embraces it, rather than shunning the unfamiliar.

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Like this:

After having watched the famous bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron (1977) featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno, I think that bodybuilding might not be such a bad premise for an anime or manga series.

The reason I came to this conclusion is that there is an important performative aspect to bodybuilding competitions, and I could see this being depicted in a manner similar to a series such as Ariyoshi Kyouko’s Swan, which is about ballet, or Miuchi Suzue’s acting-themed Glass Mask. The way that both the appearance of the body and the way that posing factors in as a way to highlight one’s strengths and obscure one’s weaknesses can provide ample material to dramatize matches and for an exposition-type character (e.g. Speedwagon in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Ryousuke in Initial D) to go into some extremely granular detail: “His arm is at 47 degrees instead of 44 degrees, causing it to look slightly bigger than it actually is!!!”

I think the real meat of a bodybuilding competition manga would be the freestyle pose-off, where bodybuilders try to make themselves look better and the other guys look worse by changing their poses in response to what the others are doing. There’s the psychology between the competitors and the psychology of how the judges are perceiving the interaction between them, and so it would perhaps be a nice way for a strategist type to psyche his opponents out. When Akagi with Muscles makes his opponent feel smaller, this could even be represented in the art by having a guy suddenly shrink down to half his actual size.

And if you want them to look freakishly muscular, just get Baki the Grappler artist Itagaki Keisuke to work his magic.

Extra points if this were a shoujo manga.

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It’s been a little under a month since I’ve began my Patreon, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to see so many people interested in Ogiue Maniax.

I’d like to thank the following patrons for their support:

Ko Ransom

Alex

Johnny Trovato (don’t worry, your patreon reward post is on the way!)

In all honestly, I thought I would receive $10 a month tops, and it’s now six times that amount. This means a new banner for the blog, which hasn’t been changed since Ogiue Maniax began in 2007.

I designed and drew the whole thing myself. You can see it above now, but just in case it ever changes, I’ve also included it below, as well as the original banner:

2015-present

2007-2015

I hope that I can continue to show some good work that will make you think, laugh, and maybe sometimes groan.

Finally, I’d like to ask a question to everyone. I recently posted a translation of an article by Japanese blogger Tamagomago. Do people want to see more translations, at the possible expense of other content?

I recently learned (thanks to Japanese popular culture scholar Patrick Galbraith’s new book The Moe Manifesto) that Magical Angel Creamy Mami is not only an influential magical girl anime but the very first anime about an idol. In other words, idols and magical girls have been conceptually tied to each for decades now. You can see this not only in the the fact that you’ll get the occasional idol + magical girl still (Cure Lemonade and Cure Sword in the Precure franchise, for example), but the fact that the latest competitors to magical girl anime have been idol-themed shows, such as Aikatsu! and Pretty Rhythm, both of which feature magical girl-like transformation sequences. I think Creamy Mami is especially significant here because the majority of magical girls prior to it were more “witch girls,” characters who already have magical powers without the need for transformation and use them for mischief.

Of course, the common trait of magical girls and idols is that they both feature cute girls, and with idols especially they’ve always occupied a position where they are innocent yet sexual, and I don’t mean that necessarily in an “idols are creep magnets” way. Both men and women respond to idols for a variety of reasons, and a lot of it is tied to the image they present. They can be somewhat literal idols for girls and targets of affection and desire for men, and this can be seen in how idols are used in anime. While Creamy Mami built an unexpected older male audience, for example, Superdimensional Fortress Macross reveled in it by combining the idol with the extremely prominent aspects of science fiction and giant robots. The 1970s brought forth a lot of giant robot anime, and the 1980s saw the time when those who became fans of robots and SF began creating their own works, as seen with Kawamori Shouji and Macross and later Studio Gainax and their Daicon III and IV animations. Many of these creators said, “I like SF, and I like cute girls,” and created a defining combination of anime where mecha and other forms of fantastic technology are mixed with cute girls.

Daicon IV

It can also be argued that the girl in the Daicon animations is herself a magical girl, but the connection between magical girls and science fiction is especially evident in the 1990s and the advent of the fighting magical girl, most notably with Takeuchi Naoko’s Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. While Sailor Moon does not feature giant robots, it’s undoubtedly influenced by the Super Sentai (i.e. Power Rangers) franchise with its own transformation sequences, color-coded costumes, and monster of the week fights. Super Sentai is not only traditionally marketed at boys (though this too changes as they eventually start trying to appeal to the “moms” market), but it’s also more broadly tied to tokusatsu, the costumed fighters and rubber monsters genre that more or less literally means “special effects.” What I find significant here is that when it comes to categorization of genres in Japanese, you often see “SF/tokusatsu,” tying things back, at least somewhat, to science fiction.

Pretty GuardianSailor Moon

Moreover, the manga group CLAMP have been fans of titles like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Saint Seiya, and Galaxy Cyclone Braiger, and have produced titles such as Magic Knight Rayearth, which features magical girls in a swords-and-sorcery world who also gain the power to summon giant robots. “Rayearth” itself is the name of a giant robot, thus making the title itself reminiscent of the naming scheme of many mecha anime such as Mobile Suit Gundam or Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V. It’s as if these female creators have taken the works that were made “masculine” by Kawamori, Gainax, and others, and in a sense re-feminized them in a process that created something new and exciting.

If we’re talking influences though, Sailor Moon and CLAMP works such as Cardcaptor Sakura are huge in and of themselves, and their shadows can be seen in a number of anime from the 2000s on. Sailor Moon basically transformed magical girls to such an extent that many assume that fighting magical girls have always been the norm, and Precure has come up as a spiritual successor that has lasted even longer than Sailor Moon. The protagonist in Sunday without God practically is Cardcaptor Sakura protagonist Kinomoto Sakura, and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, which has as its primary audience older men, clearly takes a lot from Cardcaptor Sakura as well. In the case of Nanoha, it also incorporates an increasing level of science fiction from one series to the next, as the franchise goes from technology-based magic staffs that shoot lasers in battles reminiscent of Mobile Suit Gundam to spaceships and interdimensional travel. Once again, the magical girl as cute girl is tied to SF. As for idols, they not only haven’t been forgotten, either in real life or in anime (as seen with series such as Love Live! and the aforementioned Aikatsu!), but Kawamori makes his return in the form of AKB0048, a series that not only features idols as magical girls of sorts both piloting and fighting giant robots in a story that spans a galaxy, but is directly based on one of the biggest real-world idol acts in Japan today.

AKB0048

It’s as if magical girls, idols, and SF have been doing a song and dance for years and years, changing partners along the way but always being drawn to each other. They’re seemingly tied together by the fact that just a few tweaks to either appeal to a male or female audience more, while the fact that people will not necessarily stay within the genres or types of entertainment that they’re “supposed” to remain with. Cuteness is a versatile tool that at times reinforces societal and gender norms while other times becoming a tool to defy them, and this continues to influence anime to this day.

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Once again, I’ve sat down with Alain from the Reverse Thieves to talk anime. This time, we discussed the end of HappinessCharge Precure! You can also hear our thoughts on the overall quality of the series, as well as how it stacks up to previous anime in the Precure franchise.

Information:
Torisawa Mii is a high school student who works at her family’s restaurant, Himawari. One day while preparing food at the restaurant she meets two older men one day. Sengoku Torajii and Ookami Ken turn out to be two new student teachers at her school, but Mii also uses them as fodder for her BL fiction which she posts on her blog. Mii finds herself attracted to both of them, but due to her familiarity with the two she becomes a target for jealous bullying. Mii ultimately begins a relationship with Ken, moving away to live together.

Mii is an excellent cook and has a very strong sense of responsibility, especially when it comes to managing Himawari and taking care of her grandmother. When a businessman attempts to buy out the land under Himawari, she remains steadfast in her desire to preserve the restaurant that her parents left behind. In the end, she arrives at a compromise with the businessman where Himawari would be sold and replaced by a restaurant that serves food based on her family’s recipes, but Mii also opens up her own new version of Himawari in her new town.

Fujoshi Level:
While she was already into BL, meeting Torajii and Ken made Mii get more into writing hardcore material.

In Chapter 108 of Genshiken II, Yajima’s mom plays “Are you a Man or a Woman,” Yajima tries to get closer to Hato, and the club meets Yajima’s dad. As Kuchiki has a surprisingly heartfelt moment.

I think Genshiken in general has a knack for conversations that feel natural while reflecting the awkwardness of its characters, and nowhere is this more evident than in the scene between Hato and Yajima this chapter. As Hato and Yajima are going to pick up Madarame and Kuchiki from the nearby hotel (motel?), Yajima begins to talk to him about his comic. It’s the one subject where she believes that they’re on roughly even ground and that they can both relate to in a way that the others (sans Ogiue) cannot, so she’s going to use it for all that it’s worth. It’s a moment that really says, “Yes, this is what Yajima is about.” What makes this scene really work for showcasing Yajima’s feelings, though, is the artwork itself, where Yajima is trying her best to work through her own awkwardness and continue conversation.

Obviously that scene references the previous chapters where Yajima and Hato have been working on their manga, but there are actually quite a few callbacks to events much further back in Genshiken as well. The first one worth mentioning is Yajima’s mom trying to guess which of the girls is in fact a boy. You might recall that this happened in Chapter 56, the very first chapter of Nidaime, when Madarame predictably couldn’t figure it out and Saki was able to with one look. Looking back, it’s kind of amazing how that was Madarame and Hato’s first meeting, and now it’s gotten to this crazy stage. Also, the logic Yajima’s mom uses to single out Keiko is clear, even if she’s off the mark: all of that effort put into her makeup and appearance has to be for something, right?

Poor Keiko. Poor Yajima. Speaking of Yajima, she really does look like the halfway point between her parents.

Speaking of Yajima’s mom, I do find it interesting that the chapter goes out of its way to point out her similarities to Yoshitake in terms of personality. I think we’re supposed to interpret that comparison in two ways, the first being that she has a kind of subtly aggressive personality as she questions everyone’s gender (including her own daughter’s!), and the second being that she gives off a warm, inviting personality. One could even argue that Yajima, who takes after her father in terms of temperament, would get along with someone who’s just like her mother. That’s probably a stretch, though.

The second callback comes from the bath scenes. Recalling the Karuizawa trip, it’s quite telling that Keiko treated the disparity in chest size between her and Ohno back then not as an attack on her confidence, but in the case of Angela she sees the American character’s body as more of a threat. No doubt this is done to show that Keiko views Angela as the most dangerous rival of all for Madarame, reinforcing also her initial view of Angela upon finding out that Angela has a thing for Madarame. I’ve talked about this before, but the friendly antagonism that exists between Keiko and Angela is something you don’t see in a lot of manga, let alone manga about a group of otaku. Both clearly have a lot of sexual experience, both are aware of this fact, and thus both see each other in a different light compared to the rest.

To a lesser extent, Ogiue and Sue’s bath scene also references Karuizawa, but it’s not as significant. It’s mostly just an opportunity to make a joke at Ogiue’s expense, though in this case it’s her own self-deprecation. Actually, when I think about it, most of the time when the subject of Ogiue’s chest comes up, it’s usually her putting words into another person’s mouth. “Now you’re going to say… I’m a small-chested tsundere!” exclaims Ogiue “Joseph Joestar” Chika, as Sasahara or Sue or whoever denies her accusation.

The last reference to the past is the most obvious, as Kuchiki is told to recount how he became a member of Genshiken in the first place. Between his initial club visit, his running away upon seeing the lovey-dovey interactions between Kousaka and Saki, his re-joining the club and causing trouble from the get-go, the scene for the most part reinforces Kuchiki’s role in the story as that annoying guy in the club you just can’t get rid of. However, Kio takes the time to put a bit of a twist on all of that when he has Kuchiki reminds everyone of Genshiken’s origins as a home for misfit otaku (the rejects of the rejects).

In this regard, I find that his apology to Ogiue actually says a lot. As he’s giving his speech before the toast, Ogiue jokingly reminds him that in their first meeting he laid her hands on him and that she’d never forget that, and Kuchiki gets down on his knees (“dogeza”), and immediately says sorry. Within this one moment, we can see that, as much as Kuchiki is generally a completely tactless and grating individual, that he cherishes Genshiken as more than just a place where he can fantasize about being a harem lead. Rather, it’s his home, a place that accepted him when nowhere else would, and to lose that connection is to lose a sense of belonging.

A few days ago I posted a translation of Japanese blogger Tamagomago’s latest article on Genshiken, where he asserts that the distinction between otaku and non-otaku, at least as it was in the mid-1990s to early-2000s, no longer really matters or indeed exists in the same capacity. Kuchiki clearly comes from before this time (as does Madarame of course), and I think given how Nidaime has gone it’s easy to forget just how awkward the club used to be. Kuchiki is a refreshing reminder of its origins, of a time that has arguably passed ages ago, and how places like Genshiken can be important for the awkward. On a personal level, as I’ve gotten older myself I’m no longer quite the nervous teenager I once was, and though vestiges of it still exist within me (and I’m still an awkward individual to be sure), it can be easy to forget just how intense it can be to worry that you don’t belong.

In a way, I wonder if Genshiken and its titular club at this point embody not simply the idea of a group of otaku, but the idea of a space to grow.

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NOTE: This is a translation of a post by noted Japanese blogger Tamagomago, concerning the subject of “otaku” in current society and its portrayal in Genshiken. You can follow him on Twitter @tamagomago and check out his, Tamagomago Gohan.

I’ve also translated some of his older posts on Genshiken before. You can find them here, here, and here.

All of the image links use Tamagomago’s original Amazon referrals.

As a final note, Tamagomago has a particular writing style that involves separating sentences by line, and separating general ideas by larger spaces. In the past I’ve consolidated these things into paragraphs both for readability and because WordPress used to have a hard time with multiple line breaks. This time around, I’ve tried to leave his general style intact.

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Genshiken is a manga that I love.

I love it, and that’s precisely why it’s…

Painful.

The current Madarame Harem arc is really quite interesting.

Personally speaking, I read Volume 17 and I’m on the side that thinks, “It has to be Sasahara’s sister, right?”

Though, it’s more like, Yoshitake is the very image of the female otaku during the time when Nidaime first began.

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I took a long time to write this.

Right now, I’m not an “otaku” nor am I part of a “subculture.”

I realize I’m now an adult who doesn’t “belong” to anything like that.

I think it’s a joyful thing. I can like what I like and then write about it.

And yet, why is it so painful?

Why do I feel such sadness when I read Genshiken?

It’s probably because the first part of Genshiken is a story of youth coming from the idea of “deviation,” but between Hato’s change of heart and Madarame’s situation being reset, there’s no need to be deviant.

It’s a sentiment I don’t understand, and it’s just not something I have in common with them.

Information:This Japanese government agent inspects erotic books in order to find inappropriate content. However, as a fujoshi, she herself is a fan of erotic materials and reads them in her off-hours. She treats her job not so much as a form of censorship but rather a form of protection for ero manga, preferring that they be labeled correctly in order to reach their desired audiences, while being appropriate enough that they don’t get removed outright: at one point she dressed up as Santa Claus to distribute orphaned erotic comics.

The Ero-hon G-Man has known the employee at Comic Umanohone famous for his excellent recommendations, nicknamed “Sommelier,” since they were little. Sommelier introduced her to the world of erotic books, forging a life-long friendship and a mutual attraction. As a child, she was a fan of the badminton-themed manga The Prince of the Shuttlecock.

Fujoshi Level:
She occasionally attends Sommelier’s manga recommendation evenings, and is notorious for being very specific in her interests in yaoi manga. At the same time, her tastes are fairly broad including both pretty boys and muscley men.